
A HISTORY 



OF THE 



GARDINER GREENE ESTATE 



ON 



Cotton Hill, now Pemberton Square, Boston 



EDITED BY 



WINTHROP S. SCUDDER 



A HISTORY 



OF THE 



GARDINER GREENE ESTATE 



ON 



Cotton Hill, now Pemberton Square, Boston 



EDITED BY 

WINTHROP S. SCUDDER 




REPRINTED FROM 

THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE BOSTONIAN SOCIETY 

1916 









'U ■ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Gardiner Greene Mansion House . Frontispiece 

Painted by Pratt in 1834. Taken from a spot 
near the west side of Scollay's buildings, showing the 
mansion house, stable and stable yard, and the north 
end of the Waldo house. 

Gardiner Greene 8 

From a portrait in the possession of Gardiner 
Greene, Esq., of Norwich, Conn. 

Mrs. Gardiner Greene (Elizabeth Copley) . 8 

From a photograph. 

Plan of the Greene and Adjoining Estates . 14 

Made in /8jJ by Alexander Wads-worth. 

Plan in Detail of the Greene Estate . . 18 

As it was in 1834. 

The boundaries are taken from the 1835 plan. 
The details are derived almost altogether from the 
recollection of Mrs. James S. Amory, with some 
assistance from the pictures of the house and garden. 

The Garden ... .... 26 

Painted about 1834, probably by Fisher. Taken 
from the rear of the mansion house, and showing the 
terraces, shrubbery, etc., with the Mount in the back- 
ground. The top of the Francis summer-house is 
seen in both pictures. 



FOREWORD 



Through the courtesy of Frederic Amory, Esq., 
grandson of Gardiner Greene,* and a Life Member of 
this Society, two hitherto unpublished manuscripts are 
presented to you to-day. One which gives a history 
of the house, compiled from historic documents and 
records, was written in 1886, by the late Judge Francis 
Cabot Lowell for Mrs. James Sullivan Amory. The 
other, written the same year, also for Mrs. Amory, 
gives an intimate picture of the life in the old mansion 
and an account of its distinguished mistress, by her 
friend, Mrs. Robert C. Waterston (Anna Cabot Lowell 
Quincy). 

Just a word about my connection with these papers : 
Among the pictures which I collected a few months ago, 
to illustrate "Dr. Holmes's Boston," is included the 
interesting painting by Pratt in 1834, of the Gardiner 
Greene house. A reproduction of this, with a view of 
the garden, plans of the estate on Cotton, or Pemberton 
Hill, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner Greene, 
which were with the manuscript, are to be published 
with these papers. Finding it difficult to establish from 



6 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

records in the libraries the exact date when the house 
was built, I applied to Mr. Amory, who said that the 
date would be given in an original manuscript in his 
possession. This manuscript is the one on the house by 
Judge Lowell, and preserved with it is the one by Mrs. 
Waterston. 

Your Secretary, when informed of the existence of 
these manuscripts, suggested that with Mr. Amory 's 
approval, which was readily given, they be read before 
the Society and included in the forthcoming volume 
of the Society's publications. 

Before I read these two papers, it will, I think, in- 
terest you to know a few facts about Mr. and Mrs. 
Greene, because I believe that people are more interest- 
ing than things, and because it is the personality of its 
occupants that makes a house interesting historically. 

Gardiner Greene was born in Boston in 1753, and 
died there in 1832, in his eightieth year. The founda- 
tion of his large fortune was laid in Demerara. 

While in England, where he had gone to sell his 
Demerara plantation, he met Miss Elizabeth Clarke 
Copley, and in July, 1800, was married to her in Lon- 
don. She was the daughter of John Singleton Copley 
and sister of John, afterwards Baron Lyndhurst, three 
times Lord Chancellor of England. Her mother was 
Susanna Farnham, daughter of Richard Clarke, the 
merchant to whom was consigned the tea which was 
destroyed by the Boston Tea Party. 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 7 

In 1803 Mr. Greene purchased the house on Cotton 
Hill, built by William Vassall in 1758, and he lived 
there till his death in 1832. This house was used by 
Cooper in his novel, "Lionel Lincoln," as the house 
of Mrs. Lechmere. The estate comprised about two 
and one-half acres. 

The following tribute to the character of Mr. Greene 
appeared in one of the Boston papers soon after his 
death, but the name of the writer has not been dis- 
covered : 

" I cannot permit," says the writer, " the occasion of 
the death of Mr. Greene, who was both our friend and 
our father's friend, to pass without a few observations 
on points of his character which, while they do honor 
to his memory, should have a salutary influence over 
us all. 

" The early life of Mr. Greene, as well as his latter 
days, was characterized by the grand secret of success, 
the habit of application, and in him it was no less power- 
ful than his integrity, an integrity that was rare. We 
were led to a knowledge of him by our own commercial 
intercourse with Demerara (where he laid the founda- 
tion of his large fortune), by which we frequently had 
the funds of the widow and fatherless, etc., to place in 
his hands in his Demerara character of an honest man, 
to use a familiar expression. And I know of no instance 
where any charge was made for the faithful care of the 
trusts. 



8 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

"In all the public trusts reposed in him, — and they 
were very numerous and responsible, — and in his com- 
mercial intercourse he was alike punctual and was 
possessed with a very philosophic temperament of mind. 
One of many instances of this trait I will relate. He 
made a large shipment to the north of Europe and 
sustained a very heavy loss. On the return of the 
Supercargo to Boston, Mr. Greene took him by the hand 
in his usual friendly manner, without a mention of the 
loss, and shortly after, by letters of introduction, etc., 
was instrumental in placing him in a very eligible situa- 
tion in Europe. 

" His manners were of the old school and the open 
hospitality of his house will be cherished and remem- 
bered by many distinguished foreigners and a very 
extensive circle of friends and acquaintances in this 
vicinity and throughout the country. The grounds 
around his mansion on • Cotton Hill ' (afterwards Pem- 
berton Square), commanding one of our finest views, 
have long been considered one of the 'lions of the 
city.' 

" With regard to his public benefactions I think they 
will compare with those of his compeers ; and his private 
ones were very numerous." 

At the time of his death, in 1832, Mr. Greene was 
President of the United States Bank and also of the 
Provident Institution for Savings. 





o 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 9 

In the "Transcript" of December 31, 1832, I find 
the following notice : 

"At the annual meeting of the Provident Institution 
for Savings, held Wednesday, December 19th, a letter 
was read from the Hon. Samuel Hubbard, communi- 
cating the death of the President of this institution. 
Whereupon it was unanimously voted : That this Cor- 
poration entertains a deep sense of the great loss this 
Institution and the community have sustained by the 
death of Gardiner Greene, Esq., who for many years 
gratuitously devoted himself in the office of its Treas- 
urer, with equal zeal, intelligence and fidelity to its ser- 
vice ; and who subsequently in that of its President, by 
the constant and unwearied application of his talents 
and vigilance has been greatly instrumental in extend- 
ing a confidence in it and promoting its best interests 
and prosperity." 

Mrs. Greene lived until 1866. The "Transcript" of 
February 2, the day after her death, says : 

"The venerable Mrs. Greene, who died in this city 
yesterday, at the advanced age of ninety five years, was 
the only person living here who sailed from the Province 
of Massachusetts under the British flag just before the 
Revolution. 

" With her brother, the late Lord Lyndhurst, and her 
sister, she embarked for England on the last vessel that 
left our shores under the English ensign. The three 
children then went to England to visit their father, the 



io The Gardiner Greene Estate 

famous painter, J. S. Copley, who had just returned 
from Italy, and was at that time receiving much patron- 
age from the patrons of art in London. Mrs. Greene 
lived ninety years after this meeting with her father." 

In the "Transcript" of December 29, 1832, the fol- 
lowing extract was reprinted from the " Atlas " : 

" The disposition of his property by the late Gardiner 
Greene has been the topic of conversation in this city 
since the will was deposited in the Probate Office. The 
a gg re g ate amount is as yet a matter of conjecture, but 
it is believed it will not fall much short of three million 
dollars." His widow and his son-in-law, Hon. Samuel 
Hubbard, were appointed Executors and Trustees. After 
making ample provision for his family, he manumited his 
mulatto man and allowed him the use of the house he 
lived in, free of rent, and $60 per annum. 

In editing these papers it has seemed to me most fit- 
ting that attention be drawn and a public record kept of 
these two important actors in the life of Boston one 
hundred years ago. Their house was the centre of 
that society — high-minded, intellectual, philanthropic, 
and of that hospitality, simple yet formal and elegant, 
which gave to Boston its unique and distinguished place 
among American cities ; and their numerous descend- 
ants still keep alive and carry on the fine old traditions 
of that day. 

WlNTHROP S. SCUDDER. 



A HISTORY OF 
THE GARDINER GREENE ESTATE 

On Cotton Hill, now Pemberton Square, Boston 



This paper was written in 1886 by Hon. Francis Cabot 
Lowell, (1855—19 1 1), for Mrs. James Sullivan Amory (Mary- 
Copley Greene), daughter of Gardiner and Elizabeth Copley 
Greene. It was read at the November, 1915, Meeting of 
the Bostonian Society by Winthrop S. Scudder, and is now 
printed by permission of Frederic Amory, Esq. 



(tfj]ORE than a quarter of the Town of 
Boston, as it existed a hundred years 
ago, was covered by Beacon Hill. 
This was so much larger than either 
\©n^^^^r©y Copps Hill or Fort Hill, that in some 
views of Boston they disappear altogether, while Beacon 
Hill seems to fill up the peninsula. 1 It was divided 
into three principal crests, 2 the highest in the centre, 




1 See Memorial History of Boston, vol. 3, p. 156; vol. 4, p. 66; An- 
tique Views of Boston, pp. 162, 166; Beacon Hill in 1635 and 1790, p. 
9. See also a View of Boston in 1743 (Boston Athenaeum). 

2 Mem. Hist., vol 1, p. 525. 



12 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

on which the beacon stood, with Mount Vernon to the 
west and Cotton Hill to the east. 

What was then the central crest, or Beacon Hill 
proper, is now crossed by Temple Street, 1 opposite the 
reservoir lot. 2 It was a steep, conical hill, rounded at 
the top, and rather higher than the roof of the present 
State House. 3 From this point the land fell away 
abruptly toward Bowdoin and Bulfinch streets, so that 
a piece of land between Bulfinch and Somerset streets, 
extending a little farther to the eastward was called 
Valley Acre. 4 From Valley Acre eastward rose Cotton 
Hill. Upon it there appear to have been three small 
crests, 5 one where the summer house of Mr. Ebenezer 
Francis stood, 6 another on the Greene estate, 7 with a 

1 Beacon Hill in 1635 and 1790, p. 23. 

2 Now (191 5) occupied by the State House Extension. 

3 See the colored lithographs of Beacon Hill made soon after the 
present State House was built. Copies can be found in the Old State 
House, and there are reduced copies of several (uncolored) Mem. Hist., 
vol. 4, pp. 64 et seq. 

4 Fifth Report of Boston Record Commissioners, second edition, 
pp. 79, 82, (cited hereafter as Rec. Com.). This book consists of a 
series of articles by Mr. N. I. Bowditch, originally published in the 
Boston Daily Transcript of 1855. Valley Acre is also spelt Valley 
Achor, and it is doubtful which is the original form. 

5 Snow's Hist, of Boston, p. 112. See a map of Boston made in 
1728 (Boston Public Library). It is pretty clear that the name"Tre- 
mont " did not come from Beacon, Fort and Copp's Hills. Whether, 
as Mr. Snow suggests, it came from the three crests of Cotton Hill, or 
from the three crests of Beacon Hill, is doubtful. 

6 Rec. Com., p. 77 and see the picture by Salmon, owned by Mr. 
W. H. Whitmore (Mem Hist., vol. 4, frontispiece). See also Note on 
Pictures, infra. 

7 See the picture of Mr. Greene's garden, facing p. 60. 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 13 

small valley between the two, and probably a third on 
the adjoining Phillips estate. Cotton Hill was, there- 
fore, a short ridge nearly parallel to Somerset street, 
with an abrupt descent toward Tremont street and 
Tremont Row, 1 and a somewhat gentler descent toward 
Bowdoin Square. Approaching from the east, we should 
find Tremont Row (then called Tremont street) consider- 
ably higher than it now is, 2 and rising from Howard 
street (formerly Southack's Court) towards what is now 
the east entrance of Pemberton Square. Dr. Shurtleff's 
estate was lower than Mr. Lloyd's, 3 which in turn, was 
lower than Mr. Greene's. 

Mr. Greene's mansion house stood on land about 
fifteen feet higher than the street, but it was at the 
bottom of the steep descent of the hill, which rose 
abruptly behind it in four or five terraces. The crest 
of the hill on the Greene estate was about sixty-five 
feet above the present elevation, 4 while the centre of 
the enclosure in Pemberton Square has been cut down 
about fifty-five feet. 5 The Francis summer house is 
said to have been seventy feet above the present level 
of the land on which it stood. 6 From the crest of the 
hill, the Greene estate descended towards Somerset 



i See the Faneuil Map (Boston Public Library). 

2 Information furnished by Mr. Alexander Wadsworth. 

3 From papers and plans belonging to the Jackson family. 

4 Life of Asa G. Sheldon, p. 181 (Woburn Public Library). 

5 Life of Sheldon, p. 183. 

6 Rec. Com., p. 77. 



14 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

street, where a cutting, some twenty feet deep, had 
been made when the street was laid out in 1801." At 
the beginning of this century, the steep sides of the 
hill were nearly bare of trees, 2 although several large 
English elms upon the very top of the hill served as 
landmarks to vessels entering the harbor. 3 At the 
bottom of the hill, near the house, there were doubtless 
many trees. 4 

In the " Book of Possessions," compiled soon after 
the settlement of Boston, the larger part of the Greene 
estate is set down as belonging to the Reverend John 
Cotton, second pastor of the First Church. 5 The so- 
called Waldo estate then belonged to Daniel Maud, while 
the land behind Mr. Greene's garden, the southernmost 
part of his estate, belonged to Richard Bellingham. 
Mr. Cotton's lot extended across what is now Somerset 
street to the east line of the Mt. Vernon Church 6 in 
Ashburton Place. His house stood very near the site 

1 Suffolk Deeds, lib. 210, fol. 140. Annexed to the record is a plan 
of a section made at right angles to Somerset street. This shows that 
the street was to be cut down twenty-six feet, and that the descent was 
to be graded. 

2 See the water-color view taken from Fort Hill in 1807 (Old State 
House). An engraving of this (reduced) is in Mem. Hist., vol. 4, p. 47. 
See also the view of Boston from the house of Col. Hatch in Dorches- 
ter (State Library). 

3 Mem. Hist., vol. 3, p. 228. 

4 Picture of Mr. Greene's house, Sewall's diary, vol. 2, p. 129. 

5 Rec. Com., p. 84 et seq. and see plan I. The map in the Boston 
Athenaeum and elsewhere made up from the Book of Possessions is 
needlessly inaccurate. See Note on Plans, infra. 

6 Now (1915) the Boston University School of Law. 



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.<><."&/&. 4<? Feet to an a/Tit-fr 
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PLAN OF THE GARDINER GREENE AND ADJOINING ESTATES 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 15 

of the Vassall-Greene house, and in 1636 it was doubled 
in size by Sir Harry Vane, who lived with him for two 
years. 1 Mr. Cotton died in 1653, and his estate, after 
being divided and passing through several hands, was 
united in 1682 in the possession of John Hull, mint- 
master and coiner of the " Pine Tree Shillings." 2 
Hull died a year later, and the premises passed to his 
daughter Hannah, first wife of Samuel Sewall, Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the Province. In 1697 
Sewall bought about half an acre of the Bellingham lot, 
and the estate took the boundaries which it had in Mr. 
Greene's day, except that it extended further to the 
westward, across what is now Somerset street, and 
except for the Maud-Waldo lot, bought in 1824, which 
Mr. Greene never treated as a part of his homestead. 

Judge Sewall lived on the Cotton estate for nearly 
fifty years. In 1684 he asked the General Court for 
leave to build a small wooden porch about seven feet 
square, in order to break the wind from the " fore- 
door " of his house, which stood exposed and at a dis- 
tance from other houses. 3 His petition was granted. 
Four years later, he was approached by the Reverend 
Mr. Ratcliff (afterwards Rector of Kings Chapel) and 
Captain Davis, and was asked to sell them a piece of 
land for a church lot. He refused sternly, both because 

1 Rec. Com., p. 84. 

2 Rec. Com., p. 85 ; Mem. Hist., vol. I, p. 354. 

3 Massachusetts Colonial Records, p. 456. 



1 6 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

the land had once belonged to John Cotton, and also 
because he " would not set up what the people of New 
England came over to avoid." " In after discourse," he 
continues, " I mentioned chiefly the cross in baptism, 
and holy days." l 

In 1693 Judge Sewall tore down the old Vane-Cotton 
house and built another in its place, fetching its corner- 
stones from Boston Common. 2 He was proud of his new 
residence and tells how Mr. Quincy was much pleased 
with some painted shutters in it, and " in pleasauncy said 
he thought he had been got into paradise." 3 The Judge 
walked often on the top of Cotton Hill, and when, in 
1699, Lord Bellomont came out to the Province as 
Governor, Judge Sewall invited his lady to look at the 
town from this spot, which was then, no doubt, the best 
point of view. As they came down through Sewall's 
garden gate at the back of his house, the old puritan 
gallantly begged her to let him call it Bellomont gate 
for the future. The lady graciously assented. 4 

Besides building a new house, Sewall improved the 
the estate in several ways. There were other houses 
standing upon it, which he let to Mr. Hirst, Obadiah 
Gore and others, 5 and he took great pains that Mr. 
Leblond, or Lebloom, who then owned what was later 



1 Sewall's Diary, vol. 1, p. 207. 2 Ibid., vol 1, p. 377. 

3 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 413. 4 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 500. 

5 Ibid,, vol. 2, p. 22 ; Ibid., vol. 3, p. 157. See Bonner's Map, A. D. 
1722; Mem. Hist., vol. 2, p. xiii ; Plan I. 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 17 

called the Waldo house, should not wrongfully open a 
window upon his (Sewall's) premises. 1 He also planted 
trees — poplars, probably Lombardy poplars, and a white 
oak. 2 

On Sewall's death, in 1729, the estate, or at any rate 
the mansion house, seems to have been occupied by his 
daughter Judith, wife of the Reverend William Cooper, 
pastor of the Brattle Street Church. In 1733, while 
digging in Mr. Cooper's garden, the workmen threw up 
a considerable number of human bones, and this recalls 
the fact that one of the Mathers mentions that the hill 
was sometimes called Golgotha, 3 probably from a simi- 
lar circumstance which happened earlier. Curiously 
enough, when the hill was dug down in 1835, it was 
found that the cellar of one of the houses upon it had 
been used as a family burial vault. 4 About 1758, 
Sewall's heirs divided the property, and sold it to Wil- 
liam Vassall, a relative of that Vassall who built the 
Craigie-Longfellow house in Cambridge. At this time 
there were three dwelling houses on the land, one where 
the Vassall-Greene house stood, one on the site of the 
stable, and a third behind this last. Directly south of 
the mansion house, behind the Waldo house was a 
garden. 5 

1 Sewall's Diary, vol. 2, p. 236. 

2 Sewall's Diary, vol. 2, p. 129; Ibid., vol. 3, p. 217. 

3 Shaw's Description of Boston, p. 78. 

4 Life of Sheldon. 

5 Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 92, fol. 29 et seq„ and see Plan I. 



1 8 The Gardtner Greene Estate 

Soon after his purchase, it seems that Mr. Vassall 
tore down all the houses on the estate, and built of 
wood the house which is shown in the picture. Here 
he lived, no doubt in much greater state than Sewall 
or Cooper. He was a royalist and, in 1775, he enter- 
tained in his house Earl Percy, when the latter was in 
Boston at the time of the battle of Lexington. 1 He was 
a refugee 2 and, after the peace, in 1 790, his estate was 
sold to Patrick Jeffrey, uncle of Francis Jeffrey, and 
brother-in-law of John Wilkes. 3 Like Mr. Vassall, Mr. 
Jeffrey lived in great state. 4 

In 1 80 1 he sold a strip of land to the City of Boston 
for Somerset street, and thus separated the smaller 
western portion of his estate from the larger eastern 
part. 5 On November 20, 1802, he sold this last to 
Jonathan Mason for thirty-six thousand dollars. 6 On 
April 2, 1803, Mr. Mason conveyed it to Mr. Gardiner 
Greene with the mansion house and brick stable there- 
on, the consideration being forty-one thousand dollars. 7 
Of this estate in Mr. Greene's day, Mr. Bowditch says, 
"The house had no remarkable architectural preten- 
sions of any kind, but the natural beauties of the site, 

1 Drake's Landmarks of Boston, p. 53. 

2 Rec. Com., p. 87. 

3 Ibid., p. 85. Probably Mr. Jeffrey bought the estate with his 
wife's money. For an account of the relations between the two, see 
Rec. Com., p. So. 

4 Ibid., p. 86. 5 Ibid., p. 86. 

6 Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 203, fol. 32. 

7 Ibid. Lib. 205, fol. 252. 




PLAN IN DETAIL OF THE GARDINER GREENE ESTATE 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 19 

improved by taste and art, made it altogether the most 
splendid private residence in the city." ' Mr. Marshall 
P. Wilder says, "The most conspicuous and elegant 
garden of those days was that of Gardiner Greene, who 
had one of the early green-houses of Boston. The 
grounds were terraced and planted with vines, fruits, 
ornamental trees, flowering shrubs and plants, and were 
to me when I visited them sixty-five years ago a scene 
of beauty and enchantment I shall never forget. Here 
were growing in the open air Black Hamburg and White 
Chasselas grapes, apricots, nectarines, peaches, pears and 
plums in perfection, presenting a scene which made a 
deep impression on my mind. Here were many orna- 
mental trees brought from foreign lands." 2 These gar- 
dens, either in whole or in great part were laid out by 
Mr. Greene. In 1824 he bought the small Maud- Waldo 
lot with the brick house standing on it, but he never 
treated it as part of the homestead. J 

Mr. Greene died in 1832, and the estate, containing 
103,945 feet, was appraised at $142,000.'* In 1835 it 
was sold to Mr. Patrick T. Jackson, acting for himself 
and others, the price paid being $i6o,ooo. 5 At about 
the same time, Mr. Jackson bought the Lloyd estate to 
the north, the Phillips estate to the south, and several 
estates on Somerset street to the west. He employed 

1 Rec. Com., p. 88. 2 Mem. Hist., vol. 4, p. 610. 

3 Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 293, fol. 196. 

4 Rec. Com., p. 89. 5 Ibid., p. 94. 



20 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

Mr. Asa G. Sheldon to cut down the hill and carry 
away the soil to the western part of the old Mill Pond, 
near Causeway street and the Lowell Railroad Station. 
Between seven and eight o'clock on the morning of 
May 5, 1835, the work was begun, and it was finished 
in exactly five months. 1 Mr. Sheldon employed sixty- 
three yoke of oxen, with Yankees for drivers, and one 
hundred and ninety Irishmen for shovellers. 2 The 
various houses on the hill were sold, the Greene man- 
sion house bringing two thousand dollars. In the 
Lloyd house the Yankees were lodged, 3 while three 
temporary barns were built for the oxen, and a tem- 
porary smithy for shoeing them. The English elms on 
the top of the hill were sold for timber to the Charles- 
town Navy Yard 4 and the immense shrubbery was 
destroyed. 5 Mr. Sheldon was offered three hundred 
dollars to move the gingko tree and warrant its life for 
a year. He examined it carefully and did not dare 
undertake the job ; he estimated that the tree con- 
tained about two feet of cord-wood. 6 Later it was 
successfully moved to the Boston Common, opposite 
Joy street, where it now stands. 7 



1 Life of Sheldon, p. 194. 2 Ibid., p. 189. 3 Ibid., p. 189. 

4 Ibid., p. 181. 5 Ibid., p. 181. 6 Life of Sheldon, p. 181. 

7 After Mr. Sheldon refused to take the risk of moving the tree, 
Dr. Jacob Bigelow, on account of his friendship for Mrs. Greene, had 
the tree transplanted May 7, 1835, to the head of the "long path" on 
the Common, opposite 32 Beacon street, where Mrs. Greene moved 
from Cotton Hill, and where she lived over thirty years, to the end of 
her life. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in his " Autocrat" refers to the 
gingko tree. 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 21 

Mr. Sheldon removed from Cotton Hill something 
over 100,000 yards of gravel for which he was paid 
about twenty-eight cents a yard. The day after his 
work was done, the property, which had already been 
divided into suitable lots, was sold by auction. It is 
understood that Mr. Jackson's speculation was not suc- 
cessful. 

Francis C. Lowell, 

Feb. 13, 1886 




A LONG LIFE 

A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

ELIZABETH COPLEY GREENE 

(Mrs. Gardiner Greene) 

This paper was written for Mrs. James Sullivan Amory in 1886 
by Mrs. Robert C. Waterston (Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy), daugh- 
ter of Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard College. 

It is asserted by those curious in statistics that many 
thousand souls daily enter and leave this world by the 
pathways we call life and death. Of the ninety-one 
thousand who were born in November, 1770, and of 
the thousands who left it on the first day of February, 
1866, few had lived thro' the track of time embraced 
between these two dates, ninety-six years, — a period 
which includes perhaps more vital changes, moral, men- 
tal, physical, political and domestic, than any of its 
predecessors. Yet a life has just closed among us which 
spanned this remarkable epoch. Elizabeth Clarke Cop- 
ley, the daughter of the distinguished artist, John Sin- 
gleton Copley, was born in November, 1770, in Boston, 
Massachusetts. In June, 1774, her father left America, 



24 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

for London, and on May 17th Mrs. Copley and her 
three children followed him, sailing from Marblehead 
in 1775. This was the last ship bearing the ruling 
ensign of George III which passed over the waters of 
Massachusetts Bay then washing the rocks of a colony, 
which from henceforth were to dash against the shores 
of a Republic. Three little children played upon that 
deck. The boy of two years old (Lord Lyndhurst) 
destined to be a ruler among the people to whom he 
was going, and two little girls, the eldest of the group 
(Mrs. Gardiner Greene) having just closed her long life 
at the age of ninety-five years. 

Soon after the artist's family had reached London, 
Copley's name had become known. In Sir Joshua 
Reynolds' memoir it is stated that among the pictures 
exhibited in the newly organized Academy, 1766, a self 
taught American artist contributes a portrait of " a boy 
with a flying squirrel." This picture, which first at- 
tracted public attention in London, is now in the posses- 
sion of Mrs. James S. Amory, a grand-daughter of the 
painter. In 1777, Copley is again mentioned as a mem- 
ber of the Royal Academy and as contributing several 
pictures to the Exhibition. Thus, safely across the 
Atlantic, Mrs. Copley and her children were in their 
London home, the future Lord Chancellor playing per- 
haps by stealth with his father's paint brushes. Eliza- 
beth Copley grew up in the atmosphere of a London 
artist's life, and many names which now appear almost 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 25 

classic, must have been as household words, in her 
father's home. Edmund Quincy once playfully said to 
Mrs. Greene that he could not forgive her for not 
having seen Dr. Johnson, who might, just as well as 
not, have come rolling into Sir Joshua's painting room, 
some morning when she was there with her father, a 
girl of thirteen. But she could not recall such an 
interview, though she perfectly remembered Sir Joshua 
and other celebrities. 

In July, 1800, in St. George's Church, London, 
Elizabeth Copley married Gardiner Greene of Boston, 
Massachusetts, no longer a colony, but one of the United 
States of America. The transition from London life to 
the then primitive state of society in New England, 
must have been a great change to the young lady. In 
after years she related her sensations on arriving in the 
morning of an intensely hot midsummer day. It was 
Sunday, and the good people were all going to church 
in square topped chaises, driven by negro boys who sat 
crossed legged in front to drive. A style of equipage 
which appeared new and odd to her, in her progress 
through the narrow streets. After church the news 
spread : a ship from London, and a bride, were arrivals 
that excited great interest in the quiet town, and all 
who had any right to claim acquaintance with Mr. 
Greene, flocked to the house to welcome the bridal 
party. We who have shared her hospitalities in after 
years, can readily imagine how gracefully they were 



26 The Gardiner Greene Estate 

received. But grander duties awaited Mrs. Greene on 
the threshold of her new home ; three little children, 
called her as their father's wife, by the responsible 
name of mother. The first kiss of welcome was a 
pledge, faithfully kept, of that tenderness and fidelity 
with which she performed her part towards them. Her 
own children were not more carefully reared, and the 
experience of many years only strengthened the ties 
which bound the adopted ones to their mother. Our 
first personal recollections of Mrs. Greene are connected 
with one of the mansions of the past. 

As we occasionally pass through the region of Pem- 
berton Square, like poor Susan in Wordsworth's exqui- 
site poem we see, " A mountain ascending, a vision of 
trees," a hanging garden rises before us and from the 
summit of its terraces we behold a wide sweep of land 
and sea. Half way between the garden and the street 
stands the white mansion, with its broad flights of steps, 
its paved court-yard, its ample door opening into the 
hall. The drawing rooms look towards the lower street, 
but from the cosy window seats in the dining room we 
see the garden white with snow or gay with flowers. 
We recall stately dinners, gay evening parties and wed- 
ding guests, and every where the lady of the mansion, 
a presiding presence. This noble mansion and its gar- 
dens, seem now like the baseless fabric of a vision. It 
was the home of Mrs. Greene for a life time as reckoned 
by common experience, yet after her husband's death, 



The Gardiner Greene Estate 27 

and when even the earth had been removed from where 
her home once stood, Mrs. Greene survived for more 
than thirty years. Several times she crossed the Atlan- 
tic ; on the last occasion, when one of her family ex- 
pressed some fears, that, at her advanced age, she might 
not return, she replied, " I wish to see my brother and 
sister once more. What matters it if I die in England ; 
they will lay me near my parents." One incident in 
Mrs. Greene's life is too romantic to be omitted. Not 
long before, on one of her visits to London, Lord Lynd- 
hurst had received a letter from the Executor of an old 
gentleman who had died in India. Among his effects 
was a miniature portrait of a young lady, and as the 
name " Miss Copley," was on a slip of paper pasted 
upon the back of the picture, the Executor sent it 
to Lord Lyndhurst, who bought it, previous to Mrs. 
Greene's arrival. Mrs. Greene instantly recognized it, 
as a portrait of herself when a girl of seventeen, painted 
by an amateur artist, a visitor at her father's house. 
By a singular chain of events the old lady of near eighty 
held in her hand " the counterfeit presentment " of her- 
self, as a gay young girl, in a jaunty hat and coquettish 
air, while the yellow slip of paper on the portrait showed 
how carefully it had been preserved, associated with her 
name, through long reaches of time, under tropic skies, 
until it came as a messenger out of the dim past to 
greet her after the lapse of nearly seventy years. 



28 



T/ie Gardiner Greene Estate 



When this long life, which had been prosperous and 
happy, to a rare degree, drew to its close, she once more 
became as a little child, the soul withdrawing itself to 
some mysterious shelter. 

Tenderly cared for by her devoted children, she was 
shielded from all knowledge of passing events and from 
griefs which Providence did not intend she should share. 
And her last days like her first in the old Town of 
Boston were a child's life, — still and calm, the prelude 
of a fresh experience. 

Anna C. L. Quincy Waterston, 

May 31, 1886. 




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